Arigato
by RedKetchup
Summary: There's red paint on the ice, and it's coming from Ace.


His head hurts, which convinces him not to bother lifting it off of his resting place. There is a vivid, red paint swirling on the ground, making delicate circles and patterns. He busies himself with letting his eyes follow a drop of the color sneak away from the group and make its own path on the ground. The once pale blue ice is now tinted, and some not-quite frozen water mixes with the dye. The water was grey, but now it's just ugly.

His chapped lips tug down irritably.

The ice really was ugly before, with fallen twigs and dead leaves covering a majority of it. It was like curled, brown confetti that had come from the towering trees high above it. Now the frozen pond would look even more disgusting, or _scary_ as a certain someone might say.

He idly wonders if he should be troubled that he can't seem to remember who the someone is.

Instead he forgets it and ever-so-slowly begins to move his stiff limbs. He suddenly feels hot pain flare in his ribs, and a oddly shaped wrist tries to go place his hand on them in a reaction. His eyes see double momentarily, but after a few seconds the doubles vanish. Instead black spots take up his sight, but he figures it is a better improvement. He squints at his torn, black shirt and suddenly sees that it is sopping wet.

He tries raising his head at this moment, bringing himself to his knees. The red paint he had been watching earlier drips from his head in a gush, and water drops fall from his messy hair. He brings shaky fingers to a spot on his head gingerly, and feels a large cut.

It's warm compared to the biting cold around him.

He groans and finds his face suddenly meeting the ice again. His breathing is quick and short in huffs of pain, so he tries distracting himself by looking across the pond out of the corner of his eyes.

He sees snow.

He sees trees.

He looks up and sees a snapped branch hanging onto a tree by a few pathetic splinters.

Oddly though, he also sees a hole in the pond when he finally brings his eyes back to the ice. Cracks form and spread out from the hole like spidery fingers reaching out.

He didn't realize he moved until he finds himself swaying on his feet on the edge of the hole and the ice. He peers down into pitch black water, and watches as a bubble floats to the top and pops.

He flops in.

* * *

"-cussion? He's got a damn hole in his head! Of course he's got a concussion!" a gruff voice snarls quietly, but it's like thunder to Ace's ears.

Another voice, one deeper and slower, tries to calm the gruff one. The gruff one begins to raise its tone again but a soothing sound hushes them.

"Sorry, Makino."

"It's fine Dadan-san, just try to be quiet for the boys," the soothing sound transforms into a mellifluous voice.

"Yeah, yeah. Anyway, thanks for coming here so suddenly. We couldn't exactly go marching into town to find help anyway. No one likes the mountain bandits," the gruff voice huffs.

The melodic voice laughs.

It eases Ace back into a slumber.

Ace finds himself dreaming uneasily. Something keeps him half-awake, and something else keeps lulling him to sleep again. He ends up feeling exhausted even when he's resting.

The pain keeps him awake at times, except it's never enough to help him open his heavy eyes. He feels that there are tight bandages binding his chest, wrist, and head. He dreamt that they were snakes once or twice. He tries to pretend that the bandages are easing the pain, but it never works.

He also had the mental ache tugging at his mind. It kept persisting, telling him to _wakethehellup_ because there was something he was supposed to look for. His senses kept screaming in consent. He tried to abide by the demands, but he could never accomplish more than to do some restless motions.

_Come on Ace, what's missing?_

Something warm...and small. Something that was sloppy and had limbs splayed out everywhere all the time. A ball of energy. The thing that curled into his side at nights and gripped at his clothes no matter how much he kicked it away.

It tormented Ace, and it refused to leave him be. To escape the torment he let himself slip into the agitated rest that was few and far between.

* * *

_He steps out of the brush with a unsettling worry. He pretends he knows why, but in actuality he has not a clue._

_He's greeted with a sunny clearing. A stump of a tree is in the center, and on the stump are three cups. Ace stops and stares._

_"Oi," a voice calls._

_Ace whips his head up to see a blond boy sitting against the trunk of a tree. There is a curious top hat on the boy's head with even odder goggles on the hat._

_Ace's lips quirk into a ghost of a smirk._

_"Sabo," he says, relief secretly layered in the name._

_The boy makes a smile that somewhat reflects Ace's expression. Sabo raises himself up and picks up a pipe from the ground._

_"Although you're going to come rushing to hug me," Sabo says sarcastically, "We don't exactly have time for that."_

_Ace feels a real smile go across his face momentarily. It drifts off quickly though, and the freckled boy instead steps across the bright grass to go stand by his companion._

_Sabo waits until he's close and then puts a finger to his lips to tell Ace to keep quiet. Then he waves his hand and starts walking out of the clearing with very deliberate and stealthy steps. Ace easily copies, figuring that there is some bear nearby or something._

_He feels his stomach give a pain of hunger at the thought of bear for dinner._

_Sabo leads him towards what he knows is the clifftop that they have spent so much time at before. They silently push the overgrown plants out of their way and stop at the thinning outline of remaining trees as the sea slowly comes in view._

_Sabo gives him a determined look, his eyebrows tilted inwards with a look that told Ace that there was someone at the clifftop. Ace frowned and tightened a fist as he peered around a tree._

_He sees red._

_...And then he sees blue cutoff jeans. He sees sandals, and as his eyes travel back upwards he notices that the red is a flowy shirt with half-sleeves. He then sees a hat on top of a dark-haired head of a man. The man sits on the edge of the cliff, his face tilted upwards towards the boundless blue of the sky._

_He actually doesn't think it's a man but rather more of a older teen. It doesn't change a thing, though, and Ace quickly nods his head at Sabo as a signal._

_They both begin to creep out with utter silence. They keep behind the teen deliberately and Ace feels something is off with the way the teen doesn't even notice. It's almost like this person is supposed to hear them._

_They both stop dead when the teen laughs. Sabo wears a bewildered look, but Ace takes no moment to dash forward with a roar when he feels an overwhelming feeling clench at his chest. He can't even identify the feeling before he is already bringing his fist downwards onto the teen's undefended head._

_A larger hand catches his fist at an impossible angle._

_The man did not even turn around. Ace is shocked into a still, and he stares as his hand is held, not gripped, in a strong clasp. He hears Sabo come up to his defense quickly, but the other's footsteps slow as he stared in bewilderment at the twisted arm of the teen._

_No one would be able to do that...no one but a person made of rubber._

_The person does some kind of flip in a blur of movement that manages to keep his hand holding Ace's. The teen is suddenly standing in front of them now and the first thing Ace sees is a scarred "X" that is at eye level._

_He hears Sabo gasp, forcing him to tear his gaze from the scar to finally meet the man's eyes._

_He sees a grin and another scar that is almost shaped like a smile for the left eye._

_Ace's heart stops._

_"Ace! Sabo!" the voice crows merrily._

_Sabo has stepped back to get a better look, his mouth gaping open. Ace rips his hand out of the teen's to join Sabo and just stare._

_The man...teen...little brother, has a knowing smile creep onto his matured face. He chuckles a little under his breath and brings a hand up to push his straw hat off of his head and onto his back. Then, he plops down ungracefully onto the grass and falls to his back with a content sigh._

_"I haven't been here for forever. I definitely know this is a dream," Luffy murmurs happily._

_Sabo makes a choking noise. Ace is still stuck staring. Luffy squints a eye open and watches them with a shit-eating grin._

_"Is this a dream for you guys too?"_

_Only Luffy would be able to take something this weird this calmly._

_Ace finds that he can move his legs again but only to drop onto the ground like Luffy had done. Sabo is still stuck standing._

_"Dadan would say you're trying to catch flies with you gaping like that. Shishishi!" Luffy informs them, closing his eyes again._

_Sabo finally sat down unsteadily, and he stared at Luffy...or what seemed to be Luffy at least. Ace's eyes couldn't look away from the scar on his chest._

_Almost as though Luffy could feel Ace's gaze, he propped himself up onto his elbows and looked back at the freckled boy. Ace moved his eyes to stare down Luffy's gaze. They remained that way for several minutes._

_Slowly, Luffy brought a hand out to place onto Sabo's shoulder. Sabo just looked from the hand to the owner in bewilderment. Without breaking eye contact with Ace their little brother squeezed Sabo's shoulder comfortingly._

_Then he brought his other hand and touched the scar._

_"Arigato," Luffy says._

_Ace blinks, and he sees the sudden cloud of distant pain in Luffy's eyes. It's not natural._

_"What?" Ace asks bluntly._

_The sun shines through a patch of clouds above them and makes their hair shimmer unrealistically._

_"Arigato...for saving me," he says distantly, staring off at something past Ace._

Ace jerks awake, eyes flying open.

* * *

"What happened again?"

"We found you in a puddle of blood and water, Luffy stuck under your arm. We figured the branch you two were on snapped. You must of fell and hit your head while Luffy fell through the ice. You still managed to get him though," Magra informs him.

Dadan was sprawled lazily in front of the fireplace and was scratching her backside. Some bandits were in the room, some were elsewhere in the house. The wind howled outside.

Ace listened unresponsively and continued to eat the meat they gave him.

"We got Makino to patch you up. You got some cracked ribs, a damaged wrist, and a concussion. You were out for a long time," Dogra pitches in from a spot on the floor while reading the newspaper.

Ace just grunts and bites into another piece of meat.

"Luffy was all upset, tears and everything. He was sick for a few days. You know how it goes with ice water in the winter, right? Well he was ten times more of a baby when he had a fever," a bandit laughs knowingly.

Ace is nearly done with his meal which means nearly done dealing with the bandits for the night.

When he stands up and leaves no one really says much, just figuring he's going off to bed. He would have gone back out to his country, but he wasn't really feeling up to sleeping outside tonight. Besides, Luffy was probably staying in Dadan's Country as well.

...The stupid baby.

Ace climbs into what used to be their old room. The one that they used to share before the three of them wanted to move out. The three of them...

An ache builds in his chest at that thought, but he blatantly ignores it. It would pass with time he figured as he slid the door to their room open.

A cold draft goes through and it makes the hairs on Ace's arm rise. He steps into the chilly room and squints in the dark. He sees a lump of blankets over in the corner.

He sighs heavily and wastes no time before carefully settling beside it. He wasn't expecting the lump to spring to life suddenly and scare the living daylights out of him.

"Ace?" a croaky voice echoes fearfully, little fingers groping for the elder in the dark.

"Yes Luffy, it's me. Now stop prodding everywhere and go back to bed," he snaps, pulling at the freezing appendages.

Instead it just causes them to grip his hand and sleeve tighter, and it has Ace rolling his eyes irritably. He already hears the sniffles and feels the trembling through the blankets.

He doesn't bother smacking him. He's too tired for that right now.

"A-arigato..." a sniffle makes its way to Ace's ears shakily.

Ace freezes.

"...What?"

The fingers tighten and tiny feet dig into Ace's legs.

"Arigato...for saving me." it sounds pathetic and is somehow loud in the silence.

Ace feels a lump in his throat, and his hands stop trying to pull Luffy away. He closes his eyes tightly.

He leans his head down, presses it into Luffy's hair, and simply _breathes_.

"Baka," he whispers fiercely, not even sure why he's so worked up.

"...Baka," he repeats again, more fondly than before.

Luffy is smiling, he knows he is.


End file.
